17 years on the job By John Grochalski

rivers of shit

flooding the kitchen

 

rivers of dirty water to drink

 

madmen

screaming in the bathroom

 

rivers of madmen

jerking off

to school-aged girls

 

the same faces

day in and day out

 

like reoccurring character

in the bad sitcom of my life

 

the rivers of alcohol

that i have consumed

to help me cope

 

others have worse hells

but this is mine

 

so fuck off

 

and if this place doesn’t kill me

 

and if i don’t go mad

or kill someone myself

 

i still have thirteen years of this left

 

before the great

meat grinder of capitalism

casts me off

 

like fatty gristle

on an overcooked steak

 

condescends

to finally throw me away.

John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.

Misinterpretated By April Ridge

The things heard in a loud bar

when the song changes…

a lull in the roar of sound,

voices that were drowned

in the loudness

now underlined by momentary silence:

…and that’s when I caught the house on fire, we had insurance anyway.

…that whore moved to Montana, she took my dog and my psychiatrist.

…then I shit myself.

…that bartender has a big ass.

…I heard this place is for sale on Craigslist.

…my dad’s best friend is Greg Allman’s roadie’s wife’s brother’s gardener, and we all ate at Chili’s.

…I found out she had a dick, but I was drunk.

…Ooohh! Let’s play something we can DANCE to!

…and that’s the meaning of love in a nutshell.

…I love you, what’s your name?

April Ridge lives in the expansive hopes and dreams of melancholy rescue cats. She thrives on strong coffee, and lives for danger. In the midst of Indiana pines, she follows her heart out to the horizon of reality and hopes never to return to the misty sands of the nightmarish 9 to 5. April aspires to beat seasonal depression with a well-carved stick, and to one day experience the splendor of the Cucumber Magnolia tree in bloom. 

The Old Drunken Sailor By Wayne Russell

The old drunken sailor wanted to
blaze like a red comet, across a failing
skyline.

He wanted to crash and burn into the
bosom of mother earth, he wanted to
feel her cold acceptance, at last.

The old drunken sailor, wanted to lift
the daring ominous veil, up, up off the
face of death and kiss her goodnight.

Wayne Russell is a poet, rhythm guitar player, singer, artist, photographer, and author of the poetry book Where Angels Fear via Guerilla Genius Press, it is currently available on Amazon, while his second book of poems, Splinter of the Moon will be released via Silver Bow Press in late January 2024.

Hard Decisions By Tobi Alfier

Stuck at the crossing of another glass of red and time to go, he weighs his options even while signaling the barmaid for another. Not a tough choice for him, she’ll be righteous and pissed-off at home no matter what. Thinks she keeps it to herself but he can tell.

The barmaid brings him a boilermaker instead of merlot. What the hell, the sound of glass clunking glass is nostalgic, like when he used to run across the gravel lots down by the water, toward or away from someone, the crunch that said you’re almost there, keep going.

The crunch like ice in a tall glass of rum and coke, drink of choice for the steal booze from your parents set. They never noticed even as the levels went down, down, down like Alice down the rabbit hole. How some people survived is something he’ll never understand, though he knows he barely made it himself.

Those gravel lots are now stacks of soulless condos and he’s a fugitive in a soulless life, one he would never admit to. His nerves strung tight as new fenceline over acres, insomnia full of guilt and smalltime phantoms—but it’s all her fault, or so he claims. The words she spoke to him so sweetly now beyond remembering. He thinks of her silence as doing him wrong.

He signals for another, then his time is up. He moves toward the door with something less than grace, a country-western song on the jukebox singing him goodbye. Tomorrow he’ll play their first dance if he can remember it. If he has to ask, her eyes may look away and never look back.

Tobi Alfier is published nationally and internationally. Credits include War, Literature and the Arts, The American Journal of Poetry, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Washington Square Review, Cholla Needles, James Dickey Review, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Arkansas Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others.  She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

Pentimento By Andrea Moore Johnson

The anticipation created anxiety

or perhaps the unknown resulted in fear

the outcomes so uncertain

immediate and unfolding long after

I am no longer a witness.

After the birth

the concerns had reasons

which quieted over time

watching with joy  

worry receded

layered, barely visible, pentimento.

Andrea Moore Johnson was recently published in the Cervena Barva Press, August 2023 newsletter. She currently is working on a collection of poems about her neighbors during her childhood in the Bronx. Andrea is a psychotherapist and cofounder of Women Thriving, an organization gathering communities and individuals to work together to create an impact.  

Public Service With A Crooked Smile by JPR

Sometimes, I get a great laugh from the perceptions of others.
All the trivial bullshit, the faux hardasses who can barely handle a paper cut, let alone punch to face.
I've been my own worst enemy for ninety percent of my life.
Apparently, my subconscious has been hanging with my detractors.

That no good backstabbing prick.
I don't hate people; I just prefer them to hold their breath in my presence until they change colors.
I'm always a tad bit blue myself.
I heard the rumors, I could just frankly give a shit less that, and I always did hate drinking alone.

I'd hold my breath, but death truly interrupts my cocktails.

I never let a good drink go to waste.
Gossip is great for old ladies and weasels minding the hen house.

I only mind my own business. I suggest if you want to remain topside of the tundra, you best mind your own.

Toodles.

JPR is an indoor parasailing instructor. He also teaches creative writing in the summers at Chernobyl; he is currently training for the Olympics as he is captain of the US drinking team, where he hopes to once again stomp a mudhole in those communist bastard Canadians again.

He is currently accepting submissions for his new mag, the Go Fuck Yourself Review. 

Dedicated to asshole writers who throw temper tantrums after being rejected, which is weird because I would think after remaining virgins into their late thirties, they would be used to it by now.

Remember to include your address and which day you would prefer to depart this earth.

John resides in his personal vineyard upon Mt. Doom somewhere in North Carolina.

He is preparing to tour Norway in support of his newest collection, the Donner Party coloring book, which has already gone platinum.

He is allergic to poets and oxygen. He is also an immortal who sleeps in a coffin and is a 100000-year-old demon.

He once drank water; it damn near killed him.

Your tits look lovely today, sir.

He has mental health issues and possibly brain damage. You are probably not shocked to learn this.

He is listed in the Guinness Book as the greatest bio-writer in history.

Kansas 1935 By Arvilla Fee

the wind blows through the cracks—

cracks in the doors, the floors,

cracks around the window sills;

it wails like an injured animal,

feral, enraged—

looking for a way in, a way out,

and I rock in the rocker

in this tar-paper shack,

stopping only to slug down

a half bottle of whiskey

and curse the drought

which cursed the prairie

which left me with nothing 

but a bowl full of dust

Arvilla Fee teaches English and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/